Information processing in the social brain

Ward, Isobel Louise 2021. Information processing in the social brain. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

	PDF (PhD Thesis) - Accepted Post-Print Version Download (11MB)
	PDF (Cardiff University Electronic Publication Form) - Supplemental Material Restricted to Repository staff only Download (446kB)

Abstract

This thesis explores how facial expressions are perceived in the context of an expressive body posture. Previous work has demonstrated that facial expressions can be biased by the emotion portrayed by an affective body posture. It remains unclear how these cues are combined in the human brain to form a whole-person percept of emotion. Additionally, the role of individual differences, and the developmental trajectories of facial expression and body posture integration remain unknown. In Chapter 3, I developed a novel psychophysical paradigm to quantify the influence of body posture on facial expression perception. Body context significantly biased the perception of facial expressions, but the magnitude of this bias was highly variable between individuals. This variability was highly correlated with observers’ ability to perceive isolated facial expressions; better facial expression recognition resulted in less influence of body context. In Chapter 4, I assessed how body posture influenced perception of facial expressions in children. I also quantified microstructure of white matter connecting cortical nodes responsible for face and body processing and related these metrics to children’s perceptual ability. With increasing age, children’s ability to recognise facial expressions improved, and the biasing influence of the body context decreased. Microstructural properties of functionally-defined white matter were found to predict children’s perceptual abilities. In Chapter 5, I applied a mathematical model to conceptualise the integration of facial expression and body posture cues under a cue integration framework. My results provide novel insights into the integration of face and body cues, such that the integration was found to be a weighted average of the reliability of observers’ facial expression and body posture representations. In summary, the experimental work presented in this thesis has important implications for understanding real-world social perception, where multiple social signals must be integrated to create a coherent experience of the social world.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Psychology
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	1 July 2021
Date of Acceptance:	30 June 2021
Last Modified:	30 Jun 2022 01:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/142242

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item